Leatherhead Matters

……Blue Nile may be a boy’s best friend!

When love is in the air a woman’s thoughts may turn to rings & diamonds  and  men immediately look to their credit card balance. But, a new company is easing the financial pain and smoothing the shopping experience for luxury jewellery.

Men are instinctively intimidated when they enter a jewellery store with a loved one. It’s a fine balance between pleasing the lovely lady with a large sparkler and exceeding your credit card balance!  Enter Blue Nile, an on-line jewellery store. Their web site makes it easy to learn about diamonds and provides enormous choice. You can even design your own ring on-line. All this without a sales assistant knowingly directing all their sales pitch at the prospective owner of the ring.

Blue Nile has become the largest on-line retailer of luxury jewellery. 70% of its 2007 sales are for engagement rings, suggesting many first time buyers of rings. It now has 4% share of the U.S. jewellery market and is growing fast in Britain & Canada. 85% of Blue Nile sales are to men who, on average, pay $6200 fo an engagement ring. However, women obviously still influence the important purchase since the majority of visitors to the site are female browsers.

The important point about Blue Nile, for it’s male customers, is that its business model enables it to sell jewellery 30-40% below high street prices and 50% below luxury jewellery stores.

Visit the store here …..Diamonds, Engagement Rings and Fine Jewelry at Blue Nile

We have all read about the global financial tremors caused by the US sub-prime crisis. The first UK casualty was Northern Rock. But it’s not just institutions which are at risk. As the sub prime crisis unravels, over the next 12-18 months, there are likely to be many individual tragedies.  Levels of personal indebtedness, income, credit rating and personal equity all go into the mix of determining the households most vulnerable to the sub prime crisis.

Experian, the credit rating company, has just completed an analysis of all 646 parliamentary constituencies, to assess which are the most vulnerable. This may have a significant influence on the results of the next election and the fortunes of individual MPs. You can view the Top 10 most at risk to a sub prime tsunami in the table below and download the same data for all 646 constituencies using the links below.

Top of the “Most Exposed” list is Sheffield (Brightside) whose MP is David Blunkett. 72% of his constituents are at risk from the sub prime fall-out (22,000 citizens. My own constituency of Mole Valley (MP Paul Beresford) is 617th out of 646 most exposed with almost 3% of constituents at risk (1004 citizens). No surprise perhaps that Kensington & Chelsea  (MP Malcolm Rifkind) is in bottom/ 646th position with just 0.5% of constituents at risk (370 citizens)
Find  your own constituency in this league table of potential gloom  by downloading  file below.

Download the table for all 646 constituencies here: Experian Change in Household Debt in Last Year March 2008

Download the “Debt map” to see geographic spread of most affected areas here: Experian UK Debt Map

H/T Fraser Nelson (Spectator Coffee House)